On Whale Island
by readerofasaph
Summary: What was important came to him long before what he found what he was looking for. Gon returns to Whale Island, and finds everything unchanged except for himself.


All grown-up, the foxbear cubs now have foxbear cubs of their own.

Kon is a grandfather and a widower now. The first time he comes ambling up to Gon to sniff at him in homecoming welcome, it takes a few minutes to realise why Kon is greeting him – _can_ greet him. Then Gon breathes in foxbear scent, runs his palms across coarse fur, and _knows_. Illness maybe, or an accident. It probably wasn't a passing Hunter like Kite.

Kon's cubs weren't raised by Gon, so they don't welcome him when he comes home. He catches glimpses of their russet-brown coats as he leaps through the forest; sometimes, he feels them watching. There are others watching too: the kingfishers and the lizards, the gibbons and the dragonflies.

Some of them recognise him. Even without nen, Gon realises this: he's back on Whale Island, a place where even the grass and the water know him, a place that will never cease to be home.

#

Everything is the same, but Gon is different.

He gets invited to dinner with every single of the half-dozen families who live in the village. They fill him up with shellfish stew and fried plantains and ask him to tell them about his adventures. They're happy to have him back, the only boy on their island. (One of the fisherman's wives had another baby late last year, a girl).

He's not quite so young anymore that he can describe things just as he sees them. There's things he wants to protect Mito and his great-grandmother from knowing. And many many stories nobody would understand even if he told them.

Gon doesn't quite understand those tales himself, even though he lived them.

Maybe that's something he can figure out, now that he's home.

They ask about Ging, now that they're allowed to. Before Gon left Whale Island, the neighbours never talked to Gon about his father. He's pretty sure Mito forbade the subject. And Gon has never liked going behind Mito's back, even though sometimes he has to.

Mito can't quite hold back when the subject comes up. "He's such a selfish man," she says, rolling her eyes in response when Gon describes the chairman elections, or something Ging said, or even something someone said Ging said.

As usual there's a sad edge to her voice that everyone notices and nobody mentions. It will always be there. But she is right, and Gon understands it now.

Ging is selfish. Gon doesn't think of it as a good thing or a bad thing, just as a fact.

Is Gon selfish in the same way?

Is he truly a Hunter?

#

He settles into the rhythm of home as if he'd never left. Dawn is for waking up; he spends the early morning making his bed and setting the table, while Greatgrandma warms the soup and grills salted bream.

Classes begin after breakfast and go for longer than they used to. He's never been good at thinking thoughts that are too complicated, and math lessons when you're nearly fourteen are a world of difference from math lessons when you're eleven.

He has to tell his story again too – this time with pen and lined paper. An extra credit essay, Mito said, to make up for all his absence.

Gon spends weeks just like this: staring at blank sheets, crossing out his own sentences, tearing up unfinished paragraphs - while outside a wind blows invitingly, the sun sweeps brilliant and golden across the sky, the gulls cry out.

When Mito relents he puts his stationery away and escapes into the heat of the late afternoon, the darkness of the trees – running across the forest understorey, bounding from branch to boulder, visiting all the places he used to know. The places that know him. The lake and the inlets, the tangled trunks and vine-covered caves.

He sees them, and wonders how to tell his story. The story of finding Ging.

It's not a story about Ging at all.

What was important came to him long before he found what he wanted.

He knows for sure that he's Ging's son.

#

What was important came to him long before he found what he wanted.

Killua sends an e-mail a month after their farewells. His sentences are short and breezy, and come with pictures of himself and Alluka. Here they are on a Ferris wheel, sitting in a red gondola, smiling at the camera, brother and sister, faces touching. Behind them cotton-wool clouds float in a sky blue as paint.

Here they are, eating ice-cream. Here's one of Killua alone – it's obvious that Alluka took the picture, not only because the angle is crooked but also because of the softness in Killua's eyes as he gazes at a point above the camera lens.

Gon's not good with complicated thoughts. Everything is different now.

How is it different? He needs to figure it out.

He doesn't want to.

Killua writes: _Can't tell you where we're going, because of Illu-nii. Say hi to Mito-san for me. Alluka and Nanika say hi too._

There's no _Goodbye_, at the end of the email, nor is there a _See you soon_. Just a blank space, and then Killua's name.

The two of them are finally far enough apart that Gon is starting to realise. Before, there was no distance between them, barely a slight boundary where he ended and Killua began, and when you're so close together, it's hard to to see. And it's hard to think.

But now that he can, he doesn't want to understand.

What was important came to him first, and he forgot that he wanted it.

He clicks on the reply button, and starts to type – before giving up and leaving his email incomplete as his essay is incomplete.

#

There are other important things. Kurapika calls once, and says sorry for not being there. Leorio calls more often, and brings news of other places and people: York Shin, Zepile, the kiriko, the Association.

Knuckle and Spinner Clow write postcards. Even Biscuit sends a text message.

His story is about them too. He finishes his essay and lets Mito fix his spelling and grammar in crimson ink. She sits at their dining table and goes through it sentence by sentence as he watches the changes in her face: a reluctant smile here, a frown of surprise, the frequent glimmers of worry.

"You went to a lot of places," she says, handing him the corrected sheets of paper.

He says it without really thinking, "Maybe we could travel together next time. I've got plenty of money now, so we could go wherever we like!"

She's caught off-guard. "Maybe we could," she answers, her voice pensive, before she blinks a couple of times and places her hands on her hips. "Hold on, it's years too early for you to be thinking about going on adventures again! At least catch up on your schoolwork first."

"Years, really?" asks Gon. She narrows her eyes at him.

"Go type out your essay," she orders. He obeys promptly, running up the stairs and switching on the laptop.

There are other important things. Some of them he started out with. Some of them he will never lose.

#

Apologise, then promise that you'll do things differently next time.

Will Gon get a chance to do things differently?

He can't see aura anymore. Living things are just living things now: the cat at the general store who rubs her head against Gon's ankles whenever he comes to buy milk and newspapers, the crabs scuttling across the shore at night, the fig trees and the cedars, the fruiting and flowering vines. The people of Whale Island.

At the end of monsoon season an old soldier visits the island for a fishing expedition, a weather-beaten man with sunburnt hands who smells of strength and sadness. He knows how to use nen. Gon can sense his battle-spirit, the quiet danger in his otherwise serene movements. But it doesn't matter how many times Gon tries to use Gyo. He can't see it.

Can he even fight anymore?

He was willing to throw it all away, once upon a time, but he hadn't expected to be alive to experience the loss. It's an odd feeling, the absence of things he hadn't known he would miss this much.

But he wants to live. Needs to.

Killua feels the same too, Gon knows. Killua, who would have died with him and willingly.

Killua has someone to live for now. And it's not Gon.

Gon shouldn't miss this. He has no right to feel like it's something he's lost. But he does. He does.

He still hasn't finished his reply email when the present from Alluka arrives in the post.

#

She sends him a watch, midnight black with numbers that glow in the dark and silver buttons whose functions Gon can't figure out. The strap fits his wrist perfectly. _It's waterproof_, writes Killua, _and heatproof and shockproof. Should survive no matter where you wear it. Unless you're in battle._

"Candy, of course," replies Mito, when Gon asks her what he should send back as a return gift. "If his sister has even one-tenth the sweet tooth Killua has, they'll both love it."

But what sort of candy? He's passed nights in hotel rooms with Killua, watching as the other boy exhausted the room service menu, requesting non-stop delivery of vanilla panna cotta and sachertorte and churros with melted chocolate. He's received crash courses in pralines and truffles and ganache, thrown away a thousand sweet wrappers in a single day, spent hours wandering the streets of York Shin in search of the perfect mug of hot cocoa.

If it contains sugar and it can be bought, Killua can buy it.

So it has to be something that can't be bought.

"Get Hairi-san to help you," advises his greatgrandmother. He takes her suggestion and goes to look for the carpenter's wife, bearing wildflowers and a hopeful smile.

For the rest of the afternoon he finds himself grating coconuts.

The next day he's bent over a wok for hours, stirring sweetened coconut cream with a long wooden spoon, while the heat of the stove rises continuously, making it hard to breathe. It takes forever to cook and then forever to cool to the right temperature.

Cutting and wrapping the sweets is easier, because it involves using his hands instead of waiting. He makes five hundred pieces of coconut candy. Ten for himself. Forty for Mito and Greatgrandma.

The remaining four hundred and fifty, he sends by parcel to Killua and Alluka.

Seven days later it's Alluka who emails: _Do you think you could send us more of those sweets? Oniichan's already finished them all._

#

What can he do as he is right now?

He washes dishes and hangs laundry. He catches freshwater fish from the lake. Tourists visit Whale Island, and he shows them the hidden groves and lagoons, makes sure they don't litter the beauty of the beaches.

He fails his correspondence school tests and has to retake all of them. It takes months of extra cramming and getting yelled at by Mito before he manages to pass the resits.

Time passes slowly and yet so fast.

Sometimes he's tempted to see if he should start nen training again, but another voice within always whispers, _Not yet_.

That inner voice resembles Wing, who probably half-regrets ever teaching Gon and Killua in the first place. But like Killua said a long time ago, Wing hasn't done anything he should feel sorry for. Gon doesn't feel sorry for most of it – only a few things, right at the end, and nothing to do with the Hunters who taught him nen.

Nor does he regret coming home. Back to normal. There are still things he can do.

He phones Killua.

#

Their conversation is surprisingly easy, the way it's always been. Spending time with Killua is simple and natural, whether they're training or squabbling. There are no awkward silences, no grudges that can't be resolved with a pillow-fight or an arm-wrestle.

Pillow-fights, smacks to the face – they're nothing like enough for what happened. So Gon expected talking to Killua to be difficult.

But it's easy.

They talk about Mito and Alluka, about friends old and new, for literal hours. Killua laughs when he hears of Gon's schoolwork woes.

"I suppose Alluka and I should enroll in correspondence school too. Not now though. We're still too busy."

Briefly there's a lull in the conversation, and Gon can hear Alluka's happy murmurs in the background of the phone line.

Impulsively he says: "Killua, I miss you."

There's barely a pause before Killua says, "Yeah, me too," and then changes the subject to something bright and distracting.

#

Two weeks later, when Gon looks out his bedroom window, he sees Alluka waving at him from the dirt path leading to Gon's house.

#

"She wanted to see where you lived," Killua says, looking awkward. But he follows it up with, "And I wanted to see you."

Killua is different too. With Alluka he's bargained for trinkets at the grand bazaars of the Balsa Islands; walked through waterfall spray in the mountains of Minho; offered up incense in the snake temples of Kakin.

Moving ahead while Gon stays still.

Mito fusses over Alluka and scolds Killua for not giving advance warning, then sends Gon out to buy groceries for the guests. By the time Gon gets back to the house everyone is sitting in a circle in the living room while Killua tells them about their adventures. Alluka eats slices of mango from a plate. Sometimes she interrupts to offer her side of the story.

It's not the same with three instead of two – which is not to say it isn't fun. He takes them freshwater fishing – Alluka lands two catfish that afternoon, with a little bit of help. They sit by the creek and dip their feet in the flowing water. In the evening, they take a paddleboat out to sea and watch the sun go down over dappled waves. It's good to see them. It's good to see Alluka, who is sweet and sunny and one of the kindest persons Gon has ever met.

But it's not Killua and him, the way they used to be. He wonders if Killua feels the same way too, but there's never a chance to ask.

Until the next evening, when Alluka says: "Mito-san, can you show me how to make a sponge cake?"

Mito and Greatgrandma seize upon the idea with enthusiasm; a few minutes later, Alluka has disappeared into the kitchen with the two of them, and Killua turns to Gon: "Hey, what should we do while waiting for dessert?"

His smile is like the sunrise as he stands by the half-opened front door. It's then that Gon knows for sure that everything is going to be okay.

Everything.

#

"So you can't use nen anymore?" Killua lies flopped back on the ground, loose-limbed, dressed in thin sweater and khaki shorts as he stares up at the riot of stars that cover the sky over Whale Island every night. In front of them, a campfire crackles against the falling dusk.

They've been here before, more than two years ago. They're both taller now. Killua's voice is starting to change. He sounds older but still Killua.

"I can't."

"Interesting." Killua turns on his side to stare at Gon, shadows flickering in his face. "Have you asked anyone else about it? Wing-san? Bisky?"

"I said I'd throw it all away," Gon says. "So it makes sense that I can't use nen anymore. Maybe I'm not meant to be a Hunter anymore, or to travel with you. Because I decided that it was okay to give it all up."

"A binding oath on your nen, huh." There's a stinging edge to Killua's voice that reminds Gon of bare feet on splintered glass.

"What's wrong?"

The tension around Killua eases slightly; he rolls back into a supine position. "I'm kind of pissed off. First you wanted to die fighting Pitou on your own, and now you're talking about quitting being a Hunter on your own. You're always so willing to give me up."

"You're the one who said I was number two."

"Number two is number two! You don't even have numbers! You just go off and do crazy things on your own!"

"...I'm sorry," says Gon, because he really is, and he doesn't know if he'll ever get a chance to make things right.

"Yeah. I know," Killua says softly, all the heat gone out of him.

The wind picks up then, stirring up the embers in the fire, and they watch the small glow of ashes scattering across the ground before winking out into the dark.

"Am I like my dad?" Gon asks. Not for the first time he thinks back on Ging; a brilliant and strange man in a scarf, with eyes forever looking to the next horizon, as if he's afraid to turn back and see the past he left behind.

"I didn't meet Ging," Killua shrugs. "But he's your dad, so it's not surprising that you're a bit like him. I'm a bit like my old man too. Though I don't want to be too much like him."

"I guess." Thing is though, Ging's not a very good father, but he's an amazing friend, going by the stories.

So Gon needs to learn to be that kind of friend.

"Anyway I lied," says Killua. "Well I didn't lie. You're number two, but you're not number two."

"That's so confusing," Gon says, feeling his brain start to overheat.

"Don't try to figure it out just _accept it_." Killua sounds exasperated, which is kind of unfair because Gon's not even being annoying right now. "We're good, okay?"

"How long will you be staying here?"

Killua looks away. "We leave tomorrow. I doubt Illu-nii would bother causing trouble here, but he might be tempted to if we stay too long."

"Where are you going next?"

Killua ponders the question. "Somewhere cold, I think. Alluka's never been skiing."

"Neither have I."

"You could come," offers Killua.

For a moment, Gon really is tempted. But- "I don't think I should. Not yet."

"I see." Yards away, a nightjar sings his trilling song into the fading twilight. "I had a feeling you'd say that."

The wind picks up and makes the tree branches sway; in the distance, the high tide sweeps its way up the shore. When Gon closes his eyes a hundred new smells and sounds come to life around him: ocean salt, tree sap, crickets, the rustle of Killua's clothing as he shifts position on the ground.

Gon's not sure why he feels this way, but he does believe this: it's not time to leave home.

He smiles at Killua. "You know, two years ago I was the one who wanted to find Ging, and you were the one looking for something you wanted to do. It's the opposite way round now. I'm a Hunter, but I don't have anything to hunt. And you have a plan to look after Alluka."

Killua punches him in the shoulder. It's one of Killua's not-serious punches but Gon had forgotten _how hard Killua punches_ even when he's not serious at all.

"What did I do to deserve that?"

"It seemed appropriate," says Killua, evading the question. "Anyway I'm going to enjoy my holiday while it lasts. Because you know what? Once you start using nen again you'll be back to finding new and interesting ways to kill yourself."

"I promised it would be different," Gon protested.

Killua rolled his eyes. "And so what? You're Gon Freecss. You're going to find _some_ way of nearly dying, even if it's not quite the same way."

"I-" Gon doesn't actually have a good answer to that.

Maybe he should figure out a _slightly_ better answer before he leaves Whale Island again.

#

They extinguish the fire with dirt and sand, then walk back home for triple chocolate fudge cake.

"Did you have a good talk?" inquires Alluka, her mouth stained with melted chocolate.

"None of your business," says Killua, while giving her a hug. "Did you make that on your own? It looks amazing. I could eat it all myself."

"You're supposed to share," reproaches Alluka. "Plus you've has been moping about wanting to see Gon for mo-" She's cut off by Killua pressing a finger to her lips.

"Later, Alluka," he says, his gaze darting to Gon's face, furtive and embarrassed.

Gon says,"I missed you lots too, Killua."

"See?" says Alluka cheerily.

"I am going to make hot chocolate," announces Killua determinedly. He runs to the kitchen, disappearing at lightning-speed.

#

He sees them off at the pier the next day. Alluka hugs him tightly, her long skirt billowing out in the wind. "I promise we'll come back soon!"

"Hey, that's for me to decide, not you," Killua says, ruffling her hair.

"How about I come find you?" Gon suggests. "Make it an interesting hunt for me, Killua."

Kite once described finding Ging as the most difficult hunt. Maybe that wasn't true. Maybe it is. But for Gon, it was only the first hunt.

Soon it'll be time for a second one.

"A hunt, huh?" Killua ponders. Then he smiles, his gaze soft and delighted. "You're on. Come when you're ready. Look for us."

"It's a promise," Gon says.

They stand on the deck of the sailing ship and wave to him for as long as they possibly can, their figures appearing smaller and smaller as they move further away. Gon remains at the docks watching, until their ship is nothing more than the faintest speck on the horizon.

Then he turns and takes the footpath home.

When will he be ready to leave Whale Island? A week? A month? A year? He still doesn't know. But Killua needs all the head start he can get.

This isn't a hunt that Gon plans to fail.

END


End file.
